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Daily Archives: October 1, 2011

Australian crime fiction in the news and on the web

It’s so rare to see Australian crime fiction being discussed in any depth that I was quite pleased to see The Atlantic Monthly devote a whole article to the subject entitled Down Underworld. Sadly the article is very narrow in its focus, featuring books by only a handful of writers all of whom are male, and comes at the subject of the Australian culture from a fairly simplistic standpoint. I’m not sure whether or not it was intended but the article’s author gives the impression he thinks crime fiction a bit beneath him really with comments like “Crime fiction being largely a matter of people answering doorbells…”. But is it a case of all publicity is good publicity?

Adrian Hyland appears in this short video interview with the First Tuesday Bookclub. The interview is mostly concerning his recent non-crime book KINGLAKE-350 about the devestating bushfires that swept through the part of the world he lives in a couple of years ago but as Adrian is one of our favourite authors we thought we’d share it anyway. You can see my thoughts on the book at my other blog.

John Conway‘s HELL IS MY DESTINATION was the first book to be featured in a new column called Pulp Friday over at Andrew Nette’s Pulp Curry site. Andrew is sharing his love of 60’s and 70’s pulp fiction by highlighting these largely forgotten books and if pulp is your thing then you should be subscribed to Andrew’s blog.

Katherine Howell‘s novels were the subject of a thoughtful and insightful treatment at Petrona as part of Maxine’s contribution to the #SinC25 challenge celebrating women crime writers. Howell’s debut novel FRANTIC was reviewed at Tas Book Lover

Kerry Greenwood, whose sixth Corinna Chapman mystery, COOKING THE BOOKS, is released officially today, answered Booktopia Bookshop’s 10 Terrifying Questions. You learn such surprising things in these interviews, like the fact that Kerry wrote her first book while sitting in an apricot tree!

Lenny Bartulin, whose third Jack Susko novel DE LUXE was released in August, was interviewed at Crime City After Dark.

Peter Temple‘s IN THE EVIL DAY was reviewed at Tas Book Lover (I’m actually listening to this on audio at the moment so expect a review here shortly)

Philip Gwynne‘s marvellous novel THE BUILD UP was due to be adapted for television but the SBS network announced this month that it would not be going ahead with production due to its ever-shrinking commissioning budget. This is such a shame but I suppose it’s better not to do it at all than to do it badly without the required resources.

Y.A. Erskine, whose debut novel THE BROTHERHOOD about the investigation into the shooting of a Tasmanian policeman while he was on duty was released in August (and reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction) answered Booktopia Bookshop’s 10 Terrifying Questions. Here I learned that I shared the same teenage dream as the author (being a diplomat not an actress on The Bill) and was denied for roughly the same reasons.

24 Sep – we posted a quiz & giveaway (which you still have 2 days to enter)

25 Sep – I reviewed Helen Fitzgerald’s THE DONOR – a novel generating its own unique sub-genre of comic/noir/suspense which I utterly adored

30 Sep – I reviewed Garry Disher’s latest Challis & Destry novel WHISPERING DEATH – a brilliantly complex novel, surely the best of the series so far (don’t you love it when authors keep getting better?)

Hopefully you can all find something full of Aussie goodness amongst all of that. If I missed your review of an Aussie crime fiction novel drop us a line at fairdinkum crime [at] gmail [dot] com, I use google alerts and RSS feeds to supply me with news but I have been known to hit mark all as read a bit too quickly some days :)